No Fat 40: Weeks 3 and 4 – T-Shirt Quest

Here the latest scoop, I think that maybe, possibly, perhaps i am getting into a groove with the exercising. I've stayed pretty constant with my four to five times a week routine. I do feel a bit of a change, especially when it comes to stairs and the walking up them. The two biggest issues continue to be eating and my arch enemy; smoking.

This weeks workout song:

When it comes to eating, the problem is balancing my indifference to what I eat with the people around me who aren't. No caring about what I eat is part of what got me to this state, and it will help now. i can eat a salads based diet, I'm trying to implement one in fact. But kids like pizza and fried chicken and hamburgers and so far I've not been strong enough to not eat that stuff when it's around. That part of my brain that is worried about the disappearance of pizza off the face of the Earth still holds too much sway, "You better have a slice, this could be the last pizza ever, you don't want to miss out." So I have to keep working on that.

As far as the smoking, I actually feel better with my success here than with the food. As i write this I 've only had eight cigarettes over the last 48 hours, and that was after nearly 48 hours clean. That may not seem like anything special, but it's about training my brain to not smoke. It's like gradual cold turkey. It's how I did it before, it works for me. Hopefully next week i can report on a full week of being clean.

I've talked before about one of the reasons that I gained weight was in response to my anxiety disorder. I hate calling it a disorder, it's just the way my brain works, but it does create negative effect in my life and that's kind of how the world understands these things. So for the sake of simplicity I use that term.

Anyways, Six years ago when I first quit smoking I replaced that addiction with food. I wasn't picky, I just stuffed it in my face hole. As I came to recognize my anxiety issues, learn about and deal with them, I figured out that the smoking and then the food were attempts to self medicate. To try to balance my mind. They of course didn't really help, and created more problems that fed the anxiety. Now with proper medication and this diet and exercise quest, I am figuring out how to manage this stuff and use my brain's quirks for good rather than evil.

I bring this up because I found a video this week by Wil Wheaton where he is talking about his struggles with the same mental health issues as me. He does a wonderful job of describing what it feels like and talking about how he learned to deal with it. i want ot share it with you.

This week's t-shirt is my Suicidal Tendencies concert shirt. I got this shirt in Vancouver, Canada in 1992. I loved wearing it, even in my senior pictures and yearbook.